News of the Western Belize Recreational Area, about 500 square miles of waterfalls, caves, Mayan ruins and pyramids, Belize Alps, foothills, ranches and farms, tourist accomodations of all types and description, tours and expeditions for vacationers and visitors. Even a small growing expatriate retirement group of people from different countries. In Belize, this is where it is happening, all the things that are fun and even serious, with a climate of ETERNAL SPRING.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

FINANCIAL CRISIS ESCALATING IN BELIZE AND BELIZE IS EXPECTED TO FOLLOW JAMAICA IN A YEAR FROM NOW AND TURN TO THE IMF FOR HELP?

Interviewer: Mr. Auxillou, we understand you are being forced by the Government to close your small Tourist Business? Would you care to comment?

Mr. Auxillou: That’s true! We got fined a $100 for violation supposedly for not filling out the monthly reporting forms properly by the Belize Tourist Board..

Interviewer: Were you guilty?

Mr. Auxillou: Probably? But I don’t know the specific rational being used? It wasn't explained.

Interviewer: So why close down over a $100 FINE?

Mr. Auxillou: The first FINE is indicative of a trend, a certain bureaucratic mind set, that will get worse and personally expensive over TIME. Business has to be measured in a RISK to REWARD ratio. We would expect now fines are being allocated, that in the normal flow of such things, as the Government becomes more and more cash strapped and overburdened in debt, that FINES will get bigger and more often. We think we are being warned of this trend with the first $100 FINE, is cheap notice to quit, before we get whapped with $10,000 FINES, or more. I know people who have had that happen! Plus recently in the newspapers there have been advertisements warning of half a million dollar FINES for possession of a $5 Guatemalan cell phone card by people who have family who live in both countries in the border town. We’ve been here before, back in the early 1980’s when we got forced out of the tourist business by the then Income Tax department with wildly inflated TAX ASSESSMENTS and this is a repeat. The practice of FINING will escalate and become ruinous is our extrapolation. Better to cut it off right now at the beginning. The CABINET of the day eventually corrected the Income Tax predatory persecutions with a change in the laws about the income tax abuses in past decades. It was much too late to help us back then. I expect the result will be similar here eventually, but we can’t wait around to see. We don’t know the dynamics within the Belize Tourist Board, or the Government of Belize for that matter, so we cannot know the circumstances behind it. I can guess that there are a number of situations arising to this, but do not really know? Nor do I care. The trend just means that once a government institutional department targets a small business in a predatory and persecutive manner, the situation will get more intense eventually and ultimately more expensive. Down the road we can only expect bigger FINES and more of them. Better to cut it off right now and go out of business. Our tourist business is, or was, a small family HOME BUSINESS, which means we provide a service, broaden the offerings for competitive world market share nationally in advertising, but we are no GIANT billionaire like Michael Ashcroft who just got his telecommunications shares NATIONALIZED. Our business is marginal in returns and most of the rewards are not profits, but intangible benefits, like being able to pay the monthly electrical and water bill. Nobody in the family gets a salary for instance, the most we expect is to build the country in a patriotic sense and do our part to advertise the tourist sights and benefits in competition with the rest of the world. We feel personally we are helping guide new generations of youngsters in developing Belize. Giving them examples to learn from. What we are afraid of is bigger FINES in the future and more of them. The business doesn't warrant a personal bankruptcy, over some clerical abuse of power.

Interviewer: Do you feel this is a political attack?

Mr. Auxillou: Not at all! My feeling this is from somebody STUPID in the Belize Tourist Board apparatus. I couldn't read the signature but it was headed Registrar of Hotels, whoever that might be?

Interviewer: Why not just pay the FINE and correct the reporting errors and go on as usual.

Mr. Auxillou: It doesn’t work that way in practice. When you are targeted by somebody in the government apparatus for predatory persecution, you are going to be made to suffer. This is a small country and thousands of government jobs are filled by POLITICAL PARTY HACKS, or NEPOTISTIC practices. There is no civil service EXAM done anonymously to fill government positions, for instance. Government jobs are in large part assigned on a basis of family relationships, or political party affiliation. The country is run to enrich people who run for political office and their relatives and friends. A typical practice in most small countries. This doesn’t lend itself to good government practices. We’ve had a running beef with the Belize Tourist Board about their HOTEL monthly reporting forms for three years, I believe? We ran a HOSTEL, which rents only beds, to backpacker travelers, in dormitories. The BTB forms are geared to big business HOTELS that rent rooms. Hostels and Hotels are different animals, a lot of the requirements on the BTB form, do not lend itself to clarity in our bed rental situation. I can’t figure them out, or how to apply them. Some past BTB courteous personnel have explained makeshift patches to use for our situation on these forms, but when we go several weeks without any customers, I tend to forget the explanation and besides they change BTB staff frequently and what is agreed with one person, no longer agrees with the next one. We carefully reviewed the listed complaints for the FINE. It is an impossible situation. If they want to use the regulations to go after you and FINE you, they can, no matter what I did. We just muddled along doing the best we can with an inappropriate set of reporting requirements, to account for tax collections.

Interviewer: So why the FINE now, if you have been muddling along with inappropriate forms for three years?

Mr. Auxillou: You are asking me to speculate! I have no idea? If I speculated I could come up with some guess work.

Interviewer: What would be your speculations?

Mr. Auxillou: a) Well recently we might have embarrassed the head of BTB, with a request for information on their advertising campaign on our debating listserve, by asking for a news release on their plans for a FALL advertising campaign for major newspaper advertising in Guatemala City, Salvador and San Pedro Sula for enhancing for our regional tourism flow, during our annual FALL, DEAD TOURIST season. Local regional tourism is an untapped market in Belize, though BIG BUSINESS over the border. The internal tourism of Guatemala is growing by leaps and bounds, with their 12 million people and new paved highways all over the place. We kind of would like to tap that here in Belize. Somebody on the debating listserve asked me if I really expected BTB to respond? I said no, but I thought we might prompt them, obliquely and politely into thinking about it? This might be a personal vendetta to teach me a lesson? There are over 500 private airplanes in Guatemala City for instance and a lot of those fly every weekend to the Rio Dulce airport, a growing tourist area, just South of Belize, a few miles. We had been thinking of adding another HOSTEL in that location, in a long range plan for a Hostel Chain. Bus service and the road system throughout Central America these days is superb. When we get the Jalacte, Toledo highway route connection from Belize through the South, regional tourism is going to BOOM. People on our debating listserve in Belize, didn’t think our BTB people, even think in terms of regional tourism. They are more orientated to Belgium, Holland, London and New York.b) Another guess might be their BTB tax revenues have fallen so much, they cannot cover their overhead operating costs and so are just out to SQUEEZE tourist businesses for more revenue through the application of FINES? I’ve been a middle level bureaucrat myself, so I understand with our laws, any intelligent civil servant can jiggle the rules, to JUSTIFY FINES and COVER YOUR ASS if trouble arose from doing so. I expect that will be the result here. Lots of rationalization and justifications and all sounding plausible. That’s why we closed down. It is a turf battle we cannot win, no matter what we do.c) A much wilder guess is that trouble is looming for a year from now, in government finances when the SUPER BOND escalates. Government size on current tax revenues will obviously become unsustainable. Though we expect tourism to recover somewhat next winter season. A lot of political stuff will hit the air waves this time next year. I’m vocal and trying to contribute to building the nation. This might not sit well in some political circles who are sitting in the hot seat. Though this is a stretch of the imagination. Generally speaking I approve of this current government. I feel no animosity from them politically at all. Like others I’m just waiting to see how it all turns out? Quite frankly, I don’t have a clue for the BTB FINE? The BTB can legally justify it of course. As a previous administrator myself, I know that. What I don’t understand is the WHY? You don’t develop the nation, taking these sort of approaches to small business.

Interviewer: What are your plans now?

Mr. Auxillou: ( rueful grin! ) I honestly don’t know. The bank in the USA were we had our small savings recently went bankrupt and worried us financially for a month. That seems to have been worked out with the FIDC and the bank assets have been sold to another banking chain and our savings are apparently accessible again. We are looking to find a safer place to put our savings and thinking of Guatemala to diversify geographically for safety, that pays 7 ½ % interest on CD’s. It pays to diversify geographical location due to political and economic upsets. Right now, we are involved in shutting down the tourist operation. We have two European reservation Agents and wide European advertising in Backpacker guidebooks in different languages. Reservations keep trickling in, for as far away as next March and April in 2010. We have obligations, and right now I’m trying to shut everything down as fast as I can. We need to cut off the reservation booking flow, because deposits are being made in Europe, which is money we never see, but are obligated to fulfill. It’s a bollocks of a mess! For the immediate future, we had one experimental entrepreneurial business we are still in the experimental stages of testing, we had hoped to run the new business, out of this same building facility, here in our section of Santa Elena Town, in parallel with our Hostel tourist business. We had been unable to get internet service here in our section of Santa Elena Town. BTL won’t run a wire out to this section of town, or wouldn’t before the recent Belize government takeover. Maybe things will change? We can’t wait more than a few weeks though, for something to change with internet service dynamics in Santa Elena Town. Things are coming to a head here, on a decision to go, or no go with this new business, which requires internet service. We’ve been unable to make it work using separate locations, like down in San Ignacio, two miles away. Now we are shutting the TOURIST HOSTEL section down, that changes the dynamics. Where we go from here is still up in the air. We are sort of reconsidering setting up the new business over the border, if we could buy a cheap house and take advantage of the better internet quality in speeds and bandwidth, at lower costs available a dozen miles a way from here, in Guatemala. We just returned from pricing real estate in the Guatemalan border town of Melchor de Menchos and prices are reasonable. We’ll explore that option over the next few weeks and discuss things. See if we can afford it? It is a heck of a step to take, just to get an internet connection. That is the closest entrepreneurial endeavor we currently have boiling on the stove. We’ve got some other entrepreneurial ideas, but they are not well developed yet in the research end. First thing, we had planned for September holidays and we are going to Guatemala to take a holiday down on Lake Izabel and in the Rio Dulce area. Plan to stay on our old Winnie Estelle, a boat which is retired currently from the tourist business in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye and tied up in a marina down there by the old Spanish fort, owned by a consortium of friends. We want to check out the tourism investment opportunities for a hostel also at the same time. After that, it is resolving this internet supply problem here, and what we can do about it? If we can do anything constructive about it? We were talking yesterday to the Real Estate people in San Ignacio about putting this building up for sale, to give us investment mobility and more choices. We are holding back on that decision for a while. Other entrepreneurial ideas are vague right now. We have some, but they are not well researched. One of the criteria for decision making is to avoid businesses that must deal with Belize government departments that are over regulated, in our opinion. We don’t want a repeat of this BTB type of trouble. That eliminates a lot of business making opportunities.

*** Falconview Annex containing two furnished apartments and a dormitory, also a vegetable nursery and warehouse and storage rooms. *** Hammock room.

THE STORY OF THE RISE AND CLOSURE OF, ‘FALCONVIEW BACKPACKERS ADVENTURE HOSTEL’, IN BELIZE !

We got a notice in the registered mail today, of a FINE for a $100, for an improper submission of hostel guests filling out the Belize Tourist Board registration form. That sort of was the parting of the ways, the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. We had invested $350,000 dollars and about 8 years in building a genuine, designed and built from scratch, HOME BUSINESS for traveling ADVENTURE HOSTEL, for young,adult backpackers, in Western Belize . We've been operating about three years.

As we had planned it, the idea was that the HOSTEL would give us some company of young people ( we are retired ) and hopefully make enough to pay the utility bills and the different trade and business licenses required. We were not looking to live off any profits or anything like that. Low budget tourism is not the way to get rich. I’ve been in this business since 1964 and indeed was one of the original tourism pioneers of the country of Belize . All my Belizean children are in tourism, if not as a main endeavor, as a small sideline business. As a family group we have over a million dollars invested, if not more.

The $100 FINE demand this month, from the Belize Tourist Board disturbed my equilibrium and perhaps it is FATE telling me I have outlived my time in this world. Or it is time to change life styles again? Belize is getting to be a too over regulated place, from my viewpoint. Certainly I interpret the BTB FINE of a $100 , as it is time to make a fateful change of course once again, in my life choices. You can run a home business that doesn’t make a profit, but you can’t run a home business that has NEGATIVE CASH FLOW. We view the BTB FINE as an abuse of power and common sense and NEGATIVE CASH FLOW. Instead of upgrading their reporting guest registration forms, to fit the industry requirements, they choose to apply government bureaucratic institutionalized EXTORTION, from our viewpoint. We went through this in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s with the Income Tax Department of the time, that started with one unwarranted tax assessment, or a court case, that escalated over a number of years to repeated tax assessments in one year, when they needed to squeeze money out of people. It was plain EXTORTION and we view this with the BTB as the same thing. The Belize CABINET later modified the Income Tax laws, but by then we had sold out and closed our business of the time and moved on to something else. Our personal family philosophy is that, business has to be enjoyable. You need to enjoy what you are doing. It has to be FUN! Having young adults traveling the world stay with us, is always fun for us. We get to hear their stories and give a bit of old sage advice and so forth. Many e-mail us from all corners of the world telling us their latest exploits. We enjoy getting those e-mails. It is like having an extended family. I get more e-mails from tourists who have been here, than from my own 14 grandchildren.

As Belize has grown, the new government institutions have flourished in size, quantity and regulation also. I have trouble living like that. Which is one reason nowadays the wife and I go traveling through Guatemala ; things are more laid back, like the days of my youth in Belize , and people not so drawn up in complicated regulations. We stay at HOSTELS and HOSPEDAJES in Guatemala and only sign our names and country of origin.

One of the bones of contention I have with the Belize Tourist Board, is their guest registration forms are designed for HOTELS and not for HOSTELS that use dormitories and bunk beds. We cannot interpret their form for filling out, in the section we are responsible for. The form is designed to be filled out on the top half by the visiting guest and the bottom is filled out by the Hotel operator ( not a hostel operator) . The top half filled out by the guest requires too much private information from my viewpoint. The major bone of contention is the line requiring a passport number, date of issue, place of issue. I’ve traveled the world. Normally travelers do not have a passport handy and passport numbers and date of issue and place of issue is normally done by Immigration officers at point of entry and departure to a country. Not while traveling inside a country. Few of our low budget tourists have a passport handy. They have either left it some place in the country while they explore locally, or simply have it secreted and buried in their baggage so it doesn’t get stolen. Either way, few tourists fill out that part of the form. Neither do my wife and I, when traveling anywhere either, except in police states. Last time I looked, Belize was a democracy and not a dictatorship and police state. A person did not have to walk around carrying their passport. Maybe Belize has changed without me knowing it? Whatever the reason, we are getting FINED for improper filling out of the Belize Tourist Board form, as far as I can tell? The intent of the Belize Tourist Board registration form is to make sure they get their ACCOMMODATION TAX. Plus some statistical collection, which I doubt they use. Most of the time, we do not charge tourists the Accommodation Tax, but simply pay it out of our pocket at the end of the month. These are young tourists on tight budgets and we empathise with them. That said, we don’t cheat on our taxes, nor have any inclination, or need to do so. It’s not our style.

That said; the FINE of $100 dollars by the Belize Tourist Board, for improper form filling out, or something, or other, caught us by surprise. We find it offensive! In our world of the olden days, government bureaucracies are servants of the people and in our view they are paid salaries to serve and to assist and render service, if they are unhappy with some confusion, or with what we are doing, they help to resolve the issue. To be FINED is an insult to us! We do our best with all good intentions!

Never mind that I don’t agree with the form the Belize Tourist Board designed for our business, which I regard as unsuitable and does not fit our operational circumstances. One doesn’t win an argument with a bureaucratic government institution allowed by law, to write their own regulations, interpret their own regulations and fine people for not filling out correctly to somebody’s satisfaction, the form in the manner demanded by some clerk.

Our tourism business is low volume and low budget. It should be high volume and low budget. It does not pay therefore on low volume, to have a full time staff member paid to stand at the reception desk, filling out forms. This is a family operation and only one small side activity during the month of many other activities, we are carrying on at the same time, that have nothing to do with tourism. We are usually too busy settling in guests and selling them on the tourist tours and adventures available by local tour operators. Our philosophy is to have seven small business ventures, each contributing something according to season. We don’t have that yet, but working on it. From the whole then, we expect a comfortable living, without straining too hard.

We had a good family discussion over that $100 FINE from the Belize Tourist Board. We unanimously decided to pay the fine and not fight it in court. The RISK to REWARD ratio projection is that penalties would increase exponentially and more often. Too risky too continue! But the kicker is; we decided to CLOSE down the FALCONVIEW BACKPACKER ADVENTURE HOSTEL business. Once started by any government department, the EXTORTION will continue and accelerate, this has been our experience in Belize . We no longer wish anything to do with the Belize Tourist Board. They are not NICE people! That means our advertising of Western Belize in books, articles and newsletter BLOGS, e-mails and listserves, tourist guide books also will be removed worldwide. We’ll take off all the tourist websites for Western Belize . We must have a couple of hundred of them? The BLOG alone has over 500 articles and photographs. Boy that is going to take a couple of days to delete, item by item? It did some good advertising though as the statistics show around 2 million hits in two years, for information on Western Belize . The $100 BTB FINE took the FUN OUT OF THE BUSINESS. For us, it is some mindless idiotic legalized extortion. We just don’t do business with criminals, whether they are legal, or not. Just a philosophy of life. Life is too short for the aggravation in our view. Move on to something else, we’ve had an interesting three years at it.

The TOURIST HOSTEL business we can easily live without. The big investment in a special designed building is something else. We did plan to make the facility multi-purpose, adaptable to different type home businesses. We had intended to be able to operate more than one business out of here in the same space. We’ve tried several other small business ventures, which have failed. The current one we are enthused about, which is a USA based business, done through the internet, is succeeding experimentally, but we cannot get the internet service here in Santa Elena Town needed to make it work properly. We have at least three other business venture ideas we want to try, but they mostly require being done in Guatemala, where the investment environment is more business friendly than here in Belize. We have been agonizing on how to proceed. The wife meantime tonight has been planning to convert the previous Hostel dining room area into a weaving and loom area. She currently has her loom and weaving projects in our house kitchen area, which makes it cramped. She's going to move the FUTON to the hammock and TV living room. Plus her sewing machine apparatus. Her brother Gustavo is going to move permanently with all his things into one of the furnished apartments. He’s been sleeping there anyway on a temporary basis when we had no guests, for privacy. If we can find a way to get internet out here somehow in the next couple weeks, I’ll make the dining area for tourists into a trading room. Perhaps we shall dismantle the bunk beds and store them in the warehouse, just in case we find affordable real estate on the North Side of Lake Izabel next month September and can build another hostel over there, or one of so many other business ideas we have to try? There is a lot more low budget tourism, both local, regional and international, in Guatemala and the planes from Europe to Guatemala City are full with tourists, mostly year round, unlike Belize . We’re excited about exploring the hot springs in the hills of Lake Izabel and the 25 mile long Rio Dulce gorge that is starting to boom with internal Guatemala City tourism visitors. As an excuse for an adventure, contemplating another hostel tourist business is a good enough excuse to go on a business vacation. Robert Smith, with my old vessel, the 'Winnie Estelle' also quit the tourist business in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye late last year, after several decades and is parked in a Rio Dulce marina. We can stay aboard the 68 ft Winnie Estelle and explore and adventure from there. We want a business trip to Mexico also. Got a great idea for a food packaging business inside Western Belize, but need cottage industry technological help to make it work here in Belize . Got a product source and market already. Just the processing machinery and packing know how, is the problem. If my neighbor can run a cheese factory in a DFC house across the street here in Hillview successfully, then I suppose we should be able to do our own specialty food product also? It kind of sounds like a lot of work, I’d rather not physically get involved with though. Or failing Lake Izabel as a hostel venture real estate location, or the Rio Dulce gorge, we will re-visit the mountains around Coban and re-examine the CARDOMOM spice specialty niche business? If we can find a cheap house to buy? Tea bags maybe, or herbal drinks for the Arabian market. There are so many business opportunities, it staggers the mind. It’s a great world, if you don’t let clerks in the Belize Tourist Board get you down ( grin ) ?

C’est la vie! FATE has strange ways of re-directing your energies and choices in life. The thing is to recognize the signals when they happen. What do you think? Nobody will miss our tourist business out Western Belize here. Though we like to think we helped with advertising and organizing the tourist trade through here, over the last three years. People go out of business in Belize all the time. Nobody will miss our business. Except backpacker adventurers, traveling with old guide books. Drat! We just got another booking from HostelWorld in Ireland in this email session. Going to have to notify those European agents today, to take us off their websites. Should have the signs uprooted on the highway by late Friday. We are officially out of business.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------( We'll send this letter off with a Postal Money Order for the $100 BTB FINE next week. Probably Tuesday or so and end this squabble with BTB once and for all. ) We've tried to comply but their system, doesn't comply with our system. In the conflict, we must quit! They hold all the power. Our only choice is to quit the business. Any suggestion improvements to the letter before we send it off, would be welcomed. We are officially out of business now.

( suggested letter copy )

To: REGISTRAR of Hotels and Tourist Accommodations

From: Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel ( Western Belize )

Re: OFFENCE VIOLATION TICKET received by registered mail on August 25, 2009. FINE for $100.00

To Whom it May Concern: ( Registrar of Hotels and Tourist Accommodations ) Your offence violation ticket for $100.00 disturbed us greatly. After review of the violations listed, and re-checking the regulations, we came to realize there is no way that we could ever be 100% in tune with the regulations in the ACT. There would always be something we would be in violation of. It is the nature of broad based complex legislation and the type of simplified Backpacker business we have, and the inadequate standardized forms issued by the Belize Tourist Board to fill out, that do not fit our business flow criteria. We find ourselves unable to comply with the regulations 100%.

THEREFORE:

Enclosed please find the $100 VIOLATION FINE by postal money order. Since we do not wish to carry the $100 monthly VIOLATION FINE as a monthly expense of doing business and the aggravation involved, with arguing with clerks about it. We have decided to CLOSE THE BUSINESS and will be notifying all our customers and advertising agents, booking agents of same, and European and USA travel book publishers. Websites will be closed down and road signs removed probably by the end of this week. If you know of anybody wants to buy six or seven dormitory, double,wood bunk beds, let us know. We wish to sell them!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

*** Nicole Dennison and Danielle Smith from the San Francisco Bay area.

These two girls got a bargain rate from San Francisco USA to Belize round trip. Usually you can get airline rates half the price of going to Miami or Houston, even though San Francisco is double or more the distance away. Don't ask me why? I don't understand this thing myself. Nicole and Danielle stayed in my daughter's TINA'S BACKPACKERS HOSTEL on the beach at Caye Caulker, they stayed in San Pedro and went to Placentia and then out WEST here to see the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich and Cahel Pech, two temple top ruins that are from seperate Mayan Empires, with a thousand year break between them. Slightly different architectural styles. They did their trip, low cost on a Sunday by walking up the hills to the ruins and taking the local bus service along the highways and finally a local taxi back to our FALCONVIEW BACKPACKERS ADVENTURE HOSTEL. They were sweet girls and we liked them and enjoyed their company.

The internet comes up with strange stuff. Back in 1926, the internet web pages say a fraudulent SMALL POX epidemic was declared in Kansas City, Missouri, or someplace around there. A massive vaccination campaign was imposed and many got sick and died from small pox. The internet chat says; in a follow up court case, it was proven this whole thing was a FRAUD, that there had never been a small pox epidemic before the vaccination program started. Many got sick and died from the vaccinations. It also says on the internet the same fraud was perpetrated in Pittsburg in the FALL of 1924. To sell to the government compulsory vaccinations. The American Medical Association is accused of this fraud. They had been formed about 4 years before, by John D. Rockefeller. That piece of history aside, whether true or false, does raise questions about the current H1 N1 flu epidemic scare in the world and subsequent plans to have a mandatory vaccination program in the USA. Is this just a profit making swindle is the question? Internet chatter says that the H1 N1 was created in a USA laboratory somewhere, I forget where now; but read it, they identified the lab on the internet where it was created. Since this flu epidemic is not considered any more serious than any other natural occurring flu, then why the massive money profit making mandatory vaccination program? Are we the lay public masses just victims of profit making medical hoaxes? I'm glad our health authorities in Belize don't believe the FLU vaccination is necessary here either. Certainly I don't intend to get one. Having a government make it mandatory as in the USA and in light of historical internet research, it sure reads like SWINDLE?

*** Prime Minister Barrow accused of Nepotism, if not actually making a CHAVEZ style dictatorial state.

ALL IS NOT ROSY WITH THE UDP GOVERNMENT OF BELIZE AND THE RULE OF PM BARROW SOME OF THE QUESTIONS BEING ASKED BY THE CRITICS ARE BELOW!

- is PM BARROW another CHAVEZ dictatorial type? ---- If there is a differenced what would it be?----------------------------------------------

All likenesses to any person living or dead are purely coincidental...

SERIOUSLY think about this one folks...

What would you think if you were told that in a Central American country, the first substantial acts of a newly elected government were:

1. To attempt to pass a law to incarcerate innocent citizens (preventative detention). (Smacks of political persecution if you ask me.)

2. To hold indefinitely in lock-down innocent citizens who unknowingly enter a building in which an unregistered gun is located. People, this could be your high school aged child, if you child happens to be in a classroom with another child who unknowing to your child brings a gun to school. You child could end up in jail indefinitely for having done nothing wrong. Think about it. (This is a set up to have a charge handy, any charge, that could safely be used to lock up political opponents indefinitely. The dozens of poor innocent people currently in lock down under this charge are but collateral damage. The real target is JB.)

3. To outlaw bulletproof vests. (Huh? Is that a weapon?)

4. To threaten to "commandeer the rice" from the Blue Creek farmers because they would not sell their privately grown rice for less than cost, and then go on to import rice and sell it at a much lesser subsidized cost so as to run the local farmers out of business (out of spite and bad mind?).

5. To de-politicize the post of Attorney General ... (so that an ex-wife could be appointed to the position?)

5. To have that head of state appoint his brother as Appeals Court judge? (Ex-wife the Attorney General and brother the Appeals Court judge? Doesn't that sound like major conflict of interest to you?)

6. Passes a law to put a choke hold on the unions so they cannot protest.

7. Puts the teachers under government stranglehold so they cannot dissent.

6. Nationalizes a private enterprise. (More to come?)

Bonus question:

What do you call it when a head of state appoints his ex-wife as Attorney General, his brother the judge, sibling from abroad as Min. of Police (Min. of Police needs to be a trusted pawn used to quash dissent. I predict will soon come from the dual-nationality landscape.) ... and then starts to "commandeer" private enterprise? Do we have a name?

Well not all of it! Prime Minister Barrow in a SURPRISE HOUSE SITTING IN BELIZE today announced within 48 hours that that the 94% of BTL shares lORD ASHCROFT owns will be NATIONALIZED. Ashcroft will be bought out and reimbursed by our government. The telecommunications monopoly has been a bouncing tennis ball among past politicians and Lord Ashcroft for years. One rumor has it, the past administrative political three person, cabal made privately $500 million out of selling and reselling the profitable company several times. That money long gone in Montevideo and Panama someplace? The bag man for the political CABAL went into exile rotten rich and was never prosecuted. The deal was, BTL was not developing the country. Doing the minimum possible to keep the high profits rolling in. Lord Ashcroft will be left in the telecommunications business with his 76% ownership of competitor SMART telecommunications company. When it came to BTL, Lord Ashcroft was accused of making money off the Government of Belize by a constant circle of litigation through the court systems. He was threatening some mega hundred million dollar lawsuits for a country with annual tax revenues of around $660 hundred million Belize currency. This was ROBBER BARON WAR against the country and the patrimony of Belize. We have no laws controlling ROBBER BARONS with more money than the GDP of Belize. That will change as it did in the USA back in the days of Jay Gould and those infamous Robber Barons of the USA. The announcement was made this morning and takeover is said to be 48 hours. The Prime Minister hinted, the military would be used if necessary if sabotage is detected. All employees will keep their jobs and the telecommunications company will be distributed back to Belizeans for shares sold on the open market. My family plans to buy as much shares, we dare risk, without putting all our savings in one egg basket. This move is rewarded with a massive jump in the approval report card ratings for the UDP government. 20 points UP, raising the REPORT CARD of the UDP from 51% last week, to 71% APPROVAL RATING this week.

We thought by October this year ( 2009 ) we would be able to put the different pieces together to start an entrepreneurial FINANCIAL TRADING FLOOR in our location in Western Belize. We have our own building and office space, electricity, water and cable tv. What we mostly needed and lack is internet service and telephone service. For those of you overseas contemplating investing in Belize, you might get a kick out of our travails in trying to do a start up business in a rural small pioneering country. We’ve managed to do a work around, the lack of telephone service. We are located about a quarter mile from the Western Highway, along which there is copper line telephone service. Down on the flat lands of the TWIN TOWNS there is also HIGH SPEED INTERNET available by those old homes with copper wire telephone systems. We can get neither, a quarter mile away and while there is some talk of putting in a broadband internet system, it is still going to be centimeters long frequency wavelength like micro waves and if you cannot see the company, one tower antenna, you are not going to get a signal. Even though we are about half a mile from the tower, which currently does cell phones, which we also cannot receive; due to obstructions in the line of sight between us and the tower. We resolved the telephone issue by not using, or planning on using the telephones ( which service we cannot get anyway ), but good fast reliable internet service we need. For our business proposition, we need affordable DSL. That however, is not available either, but if you are in the center of the TWIN TOWNS population cluster, pre-colonial area, where it is flat and you have a copper wire hooked up telephone, you can get HIGH SPEED INTERNET, which would be adequate for us, if we could get it. Not the best, but adequate. House and land prices are too high for us though to buy anything.Unfortunately during trading strategy trials we are watching our CABLE TV for DOW reports on the television news stations coming out of the USA. The time differential for us is two hours. So our day starts at 7 a.m., which is 9 a.m. New York Time. The day ends at 3 p.m. our time, which is close of the New York Stock Exchange. For our business, we need a straight line into the Chicago Board of Trade Options Exchange. We could and had planned on doing that through the internet. So far we watch the CABLE TV in our office and the DOW numbers and act on that by extrapolating. ( making reasoned guesses ) The local cable TV company refused to supply us with USA CNBC and the ticker tape we need for various numbers, involved in trading USA markets. We do get POLISH, RUSSIAN, CHINESE and other ASIAN ticker tape data though, on the same cable company. Unfortunately none of these work for our chosen market which is CHICAGO, which relies on the New York Stock Exchange ticker tape data. When we get the moves we wish, extrapolated from the NEWS channel with their DOW number report, then we must hop on our pickup truck and hare off down into the center of the TWIN TOWNS, two miles away, and use a pay as you go, internet café. Takes about 20 to 35 minutes to do this over potholed rough gravel roads, find a free internet café computer and log onto the trading sites at the Chicago Board of Trade Options Exchange. We could in some trading strategies lose our whole investment, or at the least a few thousand dollars with the time lag here, but with some practice and experimentation, have managed to restrict ourselves to some trading strategies that are not quite so time sensitive, though they still are somewhat. Today, we got rudely shocked though, when the market signals shot up and peaked and in our strategy we should have sold and taken about $1200 profit on one half the strategy and entered a hedge. Unfortunately at that time of the morning, the market peak was over before our local internet café owner, had even finished breakfast and when we did get into the internet café, we even lost the down market move that would have netted us another $550 had we been able to communicate with Chicago traders via the internet. So our strategy set up from last week, got ruined and broken up. Obviously a Financial Center is not going to work this way. We either forget it, or somehow get internet service in our office here in the Hillview suburb. We are happy this is only experimental time and involves strategy method testing and paper trading and not real money. Our goal had been to open in October, but we already put back that date until January because of the difficulties involved. We need internet service in our office building here in Hillview, Santa Elena Town. Since we can’t get it, from any ISP providers currently in Belize, then we looked at Satellite systems and for a while settled on HUGHES SATELLITE, the 7000s model from the advice of experts in the field. We managed to find a knowledgeable dealer in California and negotiated a rebuilt modem and activation fee, without a two year contract. Hardly want a two year service contract on an internet system, everybody tells us will not do the job we want anyway. Everybody tells us on internet forums that it will not work, due to lack of bandwidth and oversold customers. It was when we tried to ship it down here, we got into trouble on that. The freight shipping cost for the reflector dish is around $800 usa to Belize. 3 foot diameter light dish, which cardboard box is 4 ft by 4 ft x 4 ft, or shipping cubic volume of 64 cubic feet. Weighs about 15 lbs before the cardboard box. Plus you have to buy all the equipment, $300 worth. About 4 cardboard boxes in all. When we contacted a local freight importer, we were told we could not import the SATELLITE system, without a PERMIT from the Belize government PUC. The Public Utilities Commission. We have read articles in the newspapers, with pronouncements from the PUC in Belize and we have the latest telephone book, but cannot find a telephone number, or any office listed for any PUC. Probably they meet once a month someplace? Since the port town, where most of these political departments are located, and probably not in the capital Belmopan, ( much nearer to us here in the West ) but supposedly in the far away port, as far across the width of the country away from here, as to be impossible to reach. Nobody of course in government departments answer telephone calls anymore. Not sure if it is the malfunctioning telecommunications INTELCO government system, or public policy to not do government bureaucratic business by telephone, or not? At any rate, pretty much ALL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS have endless busy telephone signals at any time of the business day.It’s a two day trip, there and back, to the coastal port and a hotel overnight stopover, for someone my age, then there is no guarantee you would find anybody, if you actually knew there was such a government entity with an office and desk to go to. Far as we can find out there is no such office, or government entity, such as the PUC? At least nobody knows anything around the TWIN TOWNS in the Belize Alps foothills, when you ask. Everybody just guesses, but nobody knows for sure? Certainly they are not in the telephone book and even if they were, probably would not reply anyway? Taking a trip on a guess and by golly, so far away, is simply not practical. So without a PUC PERMIT, for which we do not even have the capability to find out how much it costs? That was kind of the straw that broke the camels back in this endeavor. Bureaucracies take weeks, if not months to take permit applications in Belize. We’ve been waiting a month and a half for a lands inspection, for example, to qualify to get a title, on a lease property the wife bought last year. Then she was told today, that it would be done later this week, as work was backlogged and after that it would be another 2 or 3 months before somebody in Lands Department in Belmopan would notify us of the fee cost for the land, from lease to TITLE processing. Then we could pay and apply and expect to get our title in a few more months, after that. ( add another six months and you are looking at a bit over a year to do something ordinary ) Here in Belize, any person in charge of a government department, is either on vacation, overseas on a course of training, or not in the office right now, or in a meeting, is the usual result when you go to a government bureaucratic office. Come back another day is the usual message you get. Another day you would get the same run-a-round anyway. Costs a lot of money and lost business time running around trying to see government bureaucrats in such a small dysfunctional governing system. I say that from experience. So, we are certainly not planning any exploratory long trips to the coastal port of Belize City, looking for an invisible mysterious PUC office? No permit, no shipping deal, so we gave up finally on the Hughes Satellite importation experiment. These are the type of problems involved with trying to set up business in rural pioneer Belize. It isn’t easy at all and can take years to do anything legally. After our shocker of today in our trading strategy tests, we are looking later this week, to take a trip across the Guatemalan Border and price small houses, ( an hour away ) with the hope we can find something to buy within our budget, in which we can build an office and connect to the superior Guatemalan competitive internet systems in Melchor de Menchos. That seems the only choice left us, other than just give up the business idea altogether? Why live here then you might ask? We are old and retired and the medical system here is better and more affordable than the mess in the USA. We would be bankrupted in the USA and couldn’t even begin to afford to live and pay for medical insurance as well. That is just one reason, and the other is I love challenges anyway and Belize is certainly full of those. The basic motto is to survive and to do that, you need shelter ( we have that ), food ( we have that and cheap too ) and medical treatment available at our age ( we have that too here ). So Belize is not too bad, we can live on around $700 usa a month quite comfortably.

THE IDEALOGICAL WAR BEING RESURRECTED BETWEEN ALBA AND DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES OF THE AMERICAS.

(Published in Belize!)

ALBA the Venezuelan controlled Federation promoting an old ideological theory of LENIN, against that of the DEMOCRACIES, which practice CAPITALISM is sure to heat up in the Americas. Lots of sociological studies have disproven statistically and empirically; that HUGO CHAVEZ, Correa, Evo Morales, Ortega, Kirschner and others are wrong in an empirical sense. Lenin’s theory was that Imperialism was the highest STAGE of Capitalism, which has long since been discredited, by India, China, South Korea, Japan, Russia and other East European countries. Lenin’s theory was that a socialist DICTATORSHIP could create a Communist Party on behalf of the working class, by taking over a capitalist society in elections and transform into a monolithic world dictatorship. In the case of HUGO CHAVEZ his first ambition is to control the American Continent in such a closed system. He calls it his BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION. Though BOLIVAR had little or nothing to do with the ideas of CHAVEZ and his friends. The only thing valid about Lenin’s theory today, is that would be DICTATORS see the socialist/communist system as a method to become ‘TYRANTS for life’. Fighting poverty we now know, democracy does a better job. The LUST FOR ABSOLUTE POWER has replaced an idealism espoused in the propaganda of the ALBA dictatorial Presidents for Life, which talk the talk, of helping the poor, using a socialist monopoly under dictatorship. In reality all these leftist leaders are doing, are destroying their countries in return for the EGO trip of being an absolute MONARCH, like any KING, Royalty, Emperor, Ayatollah, Czar or by any other name. There have been reams of sociological studies in the recent 40 years, on the effects of socialism as an idealogy and the supposed effects of Capitalism and Imperialism on the Global Economy. The idea behind LENIN and CHAVEZ and his friends, is that by being dictators, they can close their borders, discourage foreign investors, enslave their citizens into bureaucratic job systems, and thus develop autonomously as world competitive countries and societies. The statistical evidence constantly on-going, is proving the dead LENIN and HUGO CHAVEZ wrong. LENIN wrote his theory, or thesis, at a time when Imperialism and Feudal monarchies did colonize the world. ( 1916 ) Industrial Robber Barons did create monopolies. Since that time of LENIN though, the democracies have established a lot of controls on industries, capitalism, and through taxation, and pulls out enough taxes to do the poverty fighting infra-structure only dreamed of by LENIN. Another factor in raising the level of previous poor countries has been the ever increasing changes caused by technology. Which was only just starting in LENIN’s day and was not included in his theory. The more recent statistical and sociological studies show that while major large countries still are major dominant players, that countries like Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and once Rhodesia have long since proven that economies tend to merge with trade. That the poor countries actually improve their standard of living. Most kids in Guatemala and Honduras these days have their own personal cell phones, even though they may live in a thatch hut and with a dirt floor, in typical tropical rural lifestyle. There is a refrigerator in that shack and a television. That indeed the exchange of ideas and trade, raises up economically those previous poverty ridden, third world countries. Indeed many previously third world countries are now on a fair playing field, only limited by population and geographic size of their home markets. For instance HONDA and TOYOTA, NISSAN and others have penetrated the massive USA mainland with their industry and technology to carve out world markets, both in the USA and other International markets. Not counting all the newer technologies which come out of places in electronics and computers, like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China and India. New technologies are leveling the world playing field economically. The little THIRD WORLD “( David ) companies are actually beating the giant GOLIATH companies in many fields of commerce. LENIN never forsaw this development when he made his THEORY, followed today mistakenly, by CHAVEZ and his fellow ALBA dictators of today. The recent financial crash around the world in 2008, is a good example. Used by the communist socialist, without studying the statistics and empirical evidence, the doomsayers say this is the end. It sure makes good communist propaganda for illiterate citizens in Venezuela, Bolivia, or Ecuador. Especially when you eliminate opposition radio, newspapers and television stations in dictatorial censorship, like Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. History shows statistically that closed socialist societies in the past 70 years have had inside their societies, macroeconomic financial crisis situations, at a rate of 59 to 1 for the greater success of open societies, dealing with such things. Closed economies failed at a rate of 16 times more than open economies did. The flow of technological knowledge is two way today, around the world. Innovation and invention is no longer the domain of just major economies. Local politics can make a mess of things. Jamaica is an example, a major country in CARICOM. The government of the day simply could not manage the country within their tax resources. Basically, administrative and political incompetence. So they are selling off everything they own and finally they are going to the IMF ( International Monetary Fund ) for management help. Jamaica did seek assistance from Venezuela and ALBA recently, and for whatever reasons, the decision has been made to go to the IMF. ZIMBABWE is a bad example of what can happen because of racial politics. Inherently that country is capable of feeding Africa, but today millions die of starvation in ZIMBABWE. Triple digit inflation is often the result of poor political management. ALL CARICOM countries pretty much face the same problems. How to control the size of government within the money that is available from taxation. Some are better at it than others. Ours in Belize are not doing too good either. Yet we are better off than most other CARICOM countries. Mostly because of our greater size and our better orientated educational system, which has diverged from the Eastern Caribbean into something more pragmatic and economically useful to Belize. Many sociologists and economists say today, the previously poor third world nations are exploiting the developed FIRST WORLD nations. I would tend to agree with that, indeed our writings on this BLOG newsletter, “WESTERN BELIZE HAPPENINGS” is all about competing and exploiting bigger nations and their economies, by poor liddle bitty BELIZE, from a niche brand competitive viewpoint. The shoe is on the other foot today, mostly because of technological developments making the playing field level. The controlling factor in the growing of our Belize economy is political. Joining ALBA would destroy the Belize we know and make us very poor and destitute. Chavez and his Presidential hopeful ‘DICTATORS for LIFE’ aspirants are simply in it for their EGO”s and the lust for ABSOLUTE POWER in a police type state. Marxist-Leninist socialist philosophy collapsed for very good reasons and CAPITALISM with all it’s pimples, warts and boils, is still more adaptive to the rising needs of the population standard of living, level. It seems exceedingly strange to hear of the ALBA ‘Presidents for Life’ CLUB touting the establishment of a new circle of closed economies, socialist dictatorships and state bureaucratic socialism for the AMERICAS, reverting back to failed historical GREAT EXPERIMENTS. All the old socialist societies are busy converting to democratic political capitalism and change your leaders every three to four years. Are they just dimwits in ALBA, or is their LUST FOR ABSOLUTE POWER so high, they don’t care?

The question is: what are we doing about fixing our appalling educational system at the PRIMARY SCHOOL level in Belize? (70% DROPOUT RATE before finishing primary school.) We have buckets of tests to tell us which schools and which teachers are failing our young people. The kids take the tests and then we can see where the school administration and teacher talents are failing. The question is: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? How do we debate and handle this situation? Since our tax dollars are financing both the school administration ( most of which are religious schools ) and the teachers who are failing our children, how can we apply the money incentive, or money control, to improve the situation? If school management is a RELIGIOUS control problem, then maybe the money should be pulled from failing schools? We can talk about training teachers and of course we should do that. Should we pull the money from a failing school and instead have it applied to the particular district village for a teacher training program for new teachers? How do we use the tax money being spent, to improve the product of education at a village level? Can we stimulate better teacher hiring and training and school administration by using the money we spend from tax dollars? There must be ways in Belize? What are the options? Something should certainly be done, but what?

Saturday, August 22, 2009

**** Punta Gorda, Belize water taxi to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala across the 30 miles of the Bay. **** Placentia Water Taxi.

EXIT TAX

The surprise EXIT TAX that hits foreigners and travelers when leaving the country of Belize is now rated as the highest in all Central American countries. You now pay the tax whether leaving by boat, bus, or airplane. Not exactly tourist friendly taxation. Nor does the Belize Tourist Board have any advertising promotions for the FALL slow season, with our regional Central American major weekend newspapers. Nor can you get to the Western Border Immigration checkout without walking 2 1/2 miles from the nearest town, Benque Viejo Town bus terminal at the park. Nor have we yet updated our TOURIST ENTRY CARD system to cater to Latin American tourism in which some countries are treated like enemies of World War 2. This is procrastination on promoting TOURISM in Belize, by this UDP government. They just can't get their act together, except in legal briefs and political victimization. The latest being a hoooorah over political party patronage job allocations. Several thousand of them, by one newspaper mention. There are too many PIGS feeding at the TAX TROUGH of the Belize Government Revenues. Not enough producers and innovative types. Seems like everybody in the port town ( the old colonial capital ) feel it is their RIGHT to a government salaried job.

*** 500 member Citrus Growers Association, last Annual General Meeting.

JENKINS AND BOWMAN TO COST SMALL CITRUS GROWERS ALL THEIR PROFITS IN THE MILLIONS, FOR YEARS?

I don’t know beans about the citrus organization. One does get to read the hoorah in the newspapers and can only wonder at what is going on? Saw enough of such infighting over personal vendettas and EGO’s and idiots wanting their moment of fame and POWER, in the fishing industry. Sounds all the same to me! From the street and third hand gossip at that, so don’t take this interpretation as gospel, but what I got was that JENKINS designed the contract that sold the Citrus growers over to Foreign Investors. The FOREIGN INVESTORS rule the citrus crop. Their representative on the BOARD is one Henry Canton for the foreign investors. He cannot be removed, to protect their investment. Enter stage right, is a guy by the name of JENKINS and one BRIAN BOWMAN ( hope I got the name right? ) who are now agitating dissatisfaction with their own contract they designed. They want to remove HENRY CANTON from the Board of Directors. If they succeed in doing that; then a clause in the JENKIN contract with the FOREIGN INVESTORS allows the FOREIGN INVESTORS to be indemnified for their investment. One presumes after 4 or 5 years of litigation and court cases going all the way to the PRIVY COUNCIL, this will probably be close to a $100 million dollars. The people who will have to pay are not Brian and Jenkins, but the 500 small citrus growers they represent. Sure sounds like the citrus business is being wrecked? It seems that Henry Panton at some time, fired Brian Bowman for incompetence, someplace in the CITRUS business, so I was told someplace? So this is pay back time, and is all about EGO and POWER, at the expense of other people of course. ( 500 small citrus growers future dividends and profits, if any ) These two guys also have a hard on, for a small group of producers who have the biggest production. ( Envy and jealousy! ) The article said 15% of the growers produce most of the crop, I think? This small group did manage to get into the JENKINS CONTRACT with the FOREIGN INVESTORS, a small clause that INDEMNIFIES them from lawsuit losses caused by the majority small members actions, represented by JENKINS and BOWMAN. If JENKINS and BOWMAN lose the court fight, or whatever involved, there will be lawsuits flying all over the place and these court costs alone, let alone multi-million dollar judgments will make the lawyers rich if nobody else. The end result is going to be 500 or so small citrus growers are going to lose a lot of money in the years ahead as they pay for the foolishness of the leadership they have chosen representing their interests. I would think the lawyers in Belize City would be rushing to get a piece of this action, big bucks to be made here. Ho Hum! Sounds like all those SPECIAL GENERAL MEETINGS we used to have in the LOBSTER COOPERATIVE BUSINESS. Nothing every changes I guess, just human nature at work? Who is the stupid ALPHA male here causing all the trouble? Too much testosterone and not enough common sense!

*** The Guardian, the UDP party controlling government party rag of party propoganda.

UDP PARTY RAG, THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER DID PRETTY GOOD THIS WEEK, AS AN INFORMATION SOURCE OF GOVERNMENT DOINGS!

The stories in the government controlling political party, newspaper this week did a fair job at presenting stories about what the government is doing in actions. I thought it was very informative and helpful to us lay public. We will award a 2 point rise credit, on their REPORT CARD, to the UDP government for this dissemination of information on government workings.

HOT MAMA'S SAUCES AND PEPPERS ARE NOW GOING TO BE SOLD INTERNATIONALLY BY GRACE KENNEDY (Belize ) Ltd.

The world of Belize value added and processed food production for foreign markets by Belizean entrepreneurs is opening up. Word has come that Hot Mama's food condiments will be sold by Grace Kennedy ( Belize ) Ltd., internationally. Hot Mama's are run by Wilana and Howard Oldham. They have 11 pepper sauces. Stuff labeled like MILD X, HOT XX, FIRE XXX, AFTERBURNER XXXX. They also prepare and sell barbecue sauce, Manganero sauce. They have Orange Blossom Honey, Grace Premium Coffee, and even DRAGON STOUT. Grace Kennedy also market Jalepeno Potato Caserole.

The international market world for Belize processed products has not even been scratched yet and the market is unlimited for all kinds of entrepreneurs in Belize to produce food products for export. Grace Kennedy ( Belize ) Ltd., is but just one outfit with an already established international distribution system. There is certainly room for other distributors and foreign marketing firms and even more local producers. One local company re-labels Malaysian Coconut Oil and re-sells it, another does shredded coconut from the Philipines sold on the Eastern coast of Honduras. Only the imagination is a limited factor for future entrepreneurs of Belize. Business is there, you just need SWEAT EQUITY and very little capital.

BENQUE VIEJO TOWN YOUNG POLICE CADETS WENT THROUGH A SUMMER THREE WEEK PROGRAM SUCCESSFULLY

There were Community policing officer, Constable Joshua McKoy, Woman Constable Teresita Higinio, Constable Bernard Villanueva and 29 youngsters from the town community in the three week summer program. They studied ACTING and DRAMA under Eloida Itza and Joe Perez, both counselors at theMount Carmel Primary School. SPORTS was run by Eric Manzanero and Marc Gusman of the Town Council. ARTS and CRAFTS was run by the Benque House of Culture, Nalleli Trujillo. SELF DEFENSE was taught by martial arts instructor, Dale Schwerdifeger. The group even had a camping expedition and went on survival training and tours of local tourist sites.

*** The Belmopan Regional Learning English Center in the small capital of Belize.

25 MEXICAN STUDENTS ARRIVE TO STUDY ENGLISH IN BELMOPAN

The ten month English course was started on August 4th, by the arrival of 25 Mexican students on scholarship grants by the Government of Belize. They joined other International students at the Regional Language Center at the University of Belize campus in Belmopan.

Eight ladies from the Cayo District are competing for the title of reigning Queen of the Cayo District. The first presentation was held on August 14th, at Oki’s Karaoke Lounge in Benque Viejo Town on the Guatemalan border. The next presentation was held August 15th, at the Culture Club on the second floor of the Manzanero Building in San Ignacio Town,. August 22nd will see serenades at Perla’s Bar and Grill in San Ignacio Town. The big Queen of the West Pageant and Coronation dance will be held at the Novelo’s Convention Centre on August 29, 2009 with the New Sensation Band. The Queen of the West pageant chairperson is Ms. Melanie Usher and can be contacted at the San Ignacio Town Hall.

Jose Guerra charges that his taxi was impounded and confiscated and he has no way to support his family. He was transporting taxi passengers to San Ignacio Town, when at a police checkpoint, the taxi was stopped and searched at a Police checkpoint. The passengers had drugs in one of their bags and subsequently his taxi was seized. Jose complains in vain to get his taxi back. He states quite rightly he has no authority to go searching taxi passenger belongings. Why should be made to suffer?

Aerial photos show the chocolate brown color of the Macal River is being caused by the Chalillo Dam. Recent foreign experts have said from the photographs, that the discoloration is clay in the river, from the dam operators flushing out sediments behind the dam. Health officials in foreign parts also say; the photo evidence shows the water is unhealthy for the local water plant treatment. The Belize Water plant people in the Twin Towns, say it is no problem, as they get the water from wells and the earth provides a natural filter. The water of the river has been a deep chocolate brown for over a month and continues. Down on the Caribbean coast, they say the coloration has now reached the coastal water outlet of the Belize River, 200 winding river miles away, and is contaminating the coastal fisheries grounds. The coloration the experts say is due to suspended clay particles in the water. Local Health authorities warn against using the water for farms and livestock. Environmental people warn that most fish in the upper reaches of the river will have been killed by now.

We probably should start thinking about a nuclear electrical generating plant in Belize. They make them small enough to go into submarines and small enough to go on space ships into space.The big thing with nuclear energy is not safety so much, as getting rid of the half life radioactive materials left over. Technology has advanced enough, that a nuclear plant today is pretty much safe enough. I remember climbing up on top of the TEA POT reactor at Los Alamos to watch the fissionable rods giving off their heat back in the 1970’s. To give you some examples of the amount of power available in a couple of pounds of fuel material, versus the millions of gallons of oil products we have to import, plus that enormous draining foreign exchange drain, we could look at Space craft technology. Most of it has been put on hold for the last forty years, due to objections by the mass media to the radioactive dangers they perceive. It takes about 36,700 feet ( roughly 7 miles) per second for a chemical run rocket to escape the gravity well of the EARTH. You can get up to 20 miles per second with chemical rockets, which makes a trip to MARS, take a couple of years, presuming you got a solar gravity sling shot boost around the Sun. After that, the chemical method of propulsion is regarded as too slow. High School kids back in the 1970’s could easily sketch you out a nuclear power plant, to push a rocket into the solar system at greater velocities than available to the chemical rockets we continue to use today. The solid core nuclear motors of yester-year are still used today, though the technology is not really current, or making maximum use of the energies available. In these you take a basic load of fissile rods, surround them with a moderator which then heated up. This in turn heated water into steam in a parallel piping system, which turned steam turbines and ran a generator. In a space ship rocket you used something like hydrogen in a pipe instead of water and exhaust it out a nozzle for solar system travel. This technology was available back in 1965, but we never built any, due to the mass media hysteria involving contamination of the atmosphere. In the 1970’s the anti-nuclear hysteria was so bad, you could lose your civil service job if you even knew how a nuclear reactor worked. There are other developments in theory anyway, that will give a thrust, or velocity of a million feet per second. They use gaseous-fission engines. A sort of plasma bottle. Lets translate that speed, to 200 miles per second and you could reach SATURN in only a 100 days. Though Jupiter would still take a year to reach, versus the 7 years for our current crop of exploring satellites. Nowadays people stay in the Space Station longer than that! Though the space station technology isn’t very advanced at all. We still cannot create our own environment for humans, get rid of waste, or produce our water, oxygen and atmosphere, or food either. When it comes to Space Station technology the human race has been standing still. We need to build a city of 7000 people out in orbit, to lick the problems of space flight and living. The solution back in the 1970’s by a guy named Maxwell W. Hunter II, pretty much covers it all for space flight using nuclear propulsion technologies. We have a lot of new materials now to handle a lot of the problems with heat, we didn’t have back in the 1970’s. Maxwell proposed a space ship a 125 feet long, 45 feet wide and 20 feet high with a take off weight of 500 tons. 100 tons of which would be just cargo. Remember fuel in nuclear energy is measured in a few pounds. The book MAXWELL wrote way back when, “THRUST INTO SPACE” is still a classic and we are no further ahead 30 or 40 years later. So what is the state of the art today in nuclear generating plants I wonder? What do we need in Belize, something around one thousand, mega watts for the future?

Saturday, August 15, 2009

*** Deadly Soap Opera Ego Maniac threatens the American continent with war. *** Chavez with his army

CHAVEZ OF VENEZUELA TIGHTENS HIS GRIP ON THE COUNTRY WITH FEAR AND TERROR!

Latest word out of Venezuela via the internet is that censorship is being applied as fast as possible with seizure of remaining previously privately owned radio stations. In the military the HIGH COMMAND have been changed to Chavez loyalists. Either that or they are dead? The new reorganized Military apparatus are spreading a system of spy on your fellow officers and rank and file. It is against the law, a military crime to talk bad about CHAVEZ, or the Government. Using tactics originally used by Jospeph Stalin in the old war time Russian Empire and the NKVD, military personel MUST now report any traitorous talk of their fellow soldiers against Chavez or his government. Defeatist talk, or counter revolutionary talk is forbidden. Miscreants are severely punished. Promotions depend on loyalty and obedience to Chavez the Dictator of Venezuela, not on ability or training. The Venezuelan military has been turned into a spying machine on each other, with incompetents otherwise being promoted above those with skill and knowledge. Couple of months back, the Venezuelan military took control of the airports and sea ports. The DIM ( military intelligence apparatus and the CICPC ) under General Carvajal, a Chavez loyalist is working under the Interior Ministry. Sort of the Russian equivalent of BERIA under STALIN in the old Russian Federation. Rodriguez Chacin, Rangel Silva and Carvajal are military high command that have close ties in dealing with the TERRORIST BANDIT ARMY the FARC in Colombia according to numerous internet reports. They are noted Chavez fellow thugs. There has been a shuffling of military intelligence department organization and change in names, the acronyms are now different. Not sure what they are? The whole system of the Venezuelan military is now about loyalty to Chavez. Sort of like the FUEHRER CHAVEZ of Hitler times. The intent is clear. The military was the only functional resistance in Venezuela capable of changing CHAVEZ as leader of the country. This ability has been stalemated by Chavez with loyalty promotions. The events in Honduras, with the find of the computers by ex-Honduran President Zelaya with a referendum vote already counted, with an 80% win, WHEN THE VOTE NEVER EVEN TOOK PLACE, under Chavez tuterlage and direction, points to the high probability that Chavez stole the last election in Venezuela and will certainly steal the next one. As Stalin of Russia used to say, you only have to be the one doing the vote counting. It would take an armed low rank military group to make a coup against Chavez and unlikely to happen in the new atmosphere of betrayal and spies within the military apparatus from those seeking promotion and advancement. For all intensive purposes VENEZUELA has been lost to DEMOCRACY and is now a full blown totalitarian communist dictatorship. CHAVEZ is hell bent on an American continental war. His own BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Cramped by land availability rules in Belize, hampered by a dysfunctional political and bureaucratic, nepotistic, predatory political party favoritism, of business port townie discrimination. Hampered by government departmental systems that do not seem to work for rapidly changing business requirements. Belizean investors are looking to Eastern Guatemala to expand their business ventures. In the last two decades, the Eastern side of Guatamalan states, have developed massive infra-structure projects, to enable the populations of Guatemala and Belize to go into business. Belize citizens are not discriminated against and can buy and own land in Guatemala. Prominent among services available to Belize citizens in Eastern Guatemala are excellent bus services, a large network of asphalt paved new highways, young new towns growing and expanding by leaps and bounds, a vibrant work force and a market in that country of Guatemala alone, that is equal to all of the CARICOM countries put together. Not least among the attractions to over the border investment for Belize investors, are modern telecommunications competitive services in internet and telephone, at very high speeds and bandwidth, at rates a third of that in Belize, telephone systems that are available and work, ( unlike Belize ), water and electrical supply, internal and foreign shipping systems that are cheaper and more direct than any going out of Belize, covering even the Atlantic and Pacific ocean countries. The internal regional trade market with Honduras, Nicaragua, Salvador and Guatemala alone quadruple the available markets for Belize investors, over Caricom, who will establish themselves in Eastern Guatemala. Do you dream of building a chain of stores? This is the opportunity to do it. The entire neighboring region of Central America is exploding with business opportunities. The educated elite of Belize have an opportunity to get into the frontier of all this trade and economic action, whereas at home in Belize, they continue to find the business opportunities stifled by a political and bureaucrat bumbling and laggard dysfunctional systems. Or orientated by politicians using the permit and license system to steal businesses, or eliminate competition in our small scale of doing things, to the aggravation and wasted years of young people starting out in life. Life in the small circle of population in Belize is very piratical, like piranha devouring anything that enters the waters here. Belizeans on a very small scale, measured in the few dozens, have always been invested in Guatemala, from the capital in the highlands, to the Eastern state of Peten. I’ve known Belize businesses in Guatemala for more than 50 years. In the last two decades though, Guatemala has opened up the Eastern high rain fall side of the mountains to new business and there is a mad pioneering scramble down from the mountain tops and valleys along the Pan American highway system and branch roads of new entrepreneurs. Mestizos, Europeans and Mayan Indian tribes are flocking to take advantage of pioneering advantages and opening a new frontier. Belizeans frustrated by the political and bureaucracy of Belize can also join this frontier life over the border in Guatemala and indeed should do so. Frontier life in Eastern Guatemala is even more advanced than the best that Belize has to offer, when it comes to services, opportunities and infra-structure. The growing population of Belize needs room to expand and if you can’t get it in Belize for whatever political and bureaucratic nightmare obstacles and reasons, it behooves Belizeans to try their future in Eastern Guatemalan states. Things are booming and changing rapidly over there. We all may be one country in the next five years anyway, as the UDP seem intent in selling out our valuable INDEPENDENCE gained by the PUP from the United Nations 26 or so years ago to Guatemala, with nonsensical responses to eternal repetitive Constitutional Guatemalan land and sovereignty claims. The cry for this generation of higher education graduates in Belize, should be: ‘GO WEST YOUNG MAN’ go West. You have lives to build and families to raise, go where the opportunities are. Build your future, however you can! There is more entrepreneurial business opportunity in Guatemala, than in Europe, Belize, Canada or the USA. All you need is an idea, some capital, a supportive family in Belize and VOILA you can be successful beyond your wildest dreams in Belize. The nicest thing is; you can phone home cheaply, travel there quickly in one day by bus for a visit, or drive in your own car. This may not sound patriotic, but facts are facts and our leadership in politics has been sadly self centered and not done justice to Belizeans living in Belize. Don’t get discouraged, the land of milk and honey is just over the border. It is a lot easier to be a frontier pioneer in Eastern Guatemala than in Belize.

Letter of enquiry to Manuel Trujillo, Director of Research and Development at Central Farm Government Agriculture Station in Belize.

Dear sir;

Do you think you could enquire of the Taiwanese Mission and get some clarifications of the orchid growing program they are currently doing? Am concerned about the orientation in species that are being developed? Recent discussions on the Belize Culture List serve, by experts in the Florida, USA, have pointed out a discrepancy in these early days of this Taiwanese Mission horticulture project. The project itself is exciting and breaks new ground in Belize and opens up windows of opportunity previously undreamed of, by the small circle of entrepreneurs in Belize. The director of the research for Taiwan is to be recommended for his skill in introducing this system into Belize. The tour of the greenhouse, the other day blew my mind, being an amateur layman and I did not understand a half of what he had to say. In essence, the future of this project has good potential. Where the misunderstandings came in, were not so much involved with the methodology, or foreign market potential, but the choice of varieties. Recent discussions with our Florida Belize Culture list serve counterparts who are in the business up there in the USA. One person grows over 700 varieties of orchids, and another ( my daughter ) Mrs. Sharon Auxillou Urscheler of Flora Tech Landscapes of South Florida, questioned the sample in the photograph we recently published on our website discussions. They were both familiar with the orchid in question and the methodology involved. Your position as head of RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT in Central Farm would seem to be in the position of identifying the market any orchids, or bromeliads in Belize are going to be prepared and shipped too? What we got from both professionals who use these orchids in a commercial setting in the USA, was the impression that any variety that required temperature controlled greenhouse, air conditioning would be impracticable for any possible markets available to Belizean orchid growers. Due to the high cost of electricity in Belize over a three year growing period. Previous applications for land at cooler higher altitudes in the Belize Alps to grow such orchids over the past eight years, were stonewalled by the government bureaucracy. The orchid in the photo I’m told, is bought by my daughter in South Florida and resold and installed in hotels and offices in their business and costs them $7 usa each distributor prices. This does not gell with the costs of operating electricity for an air conditioned greenhouse by a grower in Belize for a flower plant, that takes three to five years to grow. It was suggested to us on the list serve, that electricity costs in Belize would prohibit any such varieties for marketing. The question when given to the Director of the Orchid program in Central Farm, was replied, that they grow and ship for export millions of such orchids in Taiwan. I wonder therefore if you can get a clarification of price and targeted market that Taiwan is using? Is it Japan, Hong Kong, or where? One would think in Belize our market would be the USA and Canada? A smaller possibility of Europe? You are talking 6 weeks shipping time, reefer cargo containers here to Europe. Comparison of available markets for export and prices would be necessary to decide on varieties I would think? I would appreciate your feedback for a further developmental fact finding informational article to publish for entrepreneurs in this business future. My daughter Sharon, in the business herself in South Florida, suggested some other varieties with which I am not familiar. I would also suppose there are different markets and requirements for marketing in places like Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf oil and tourist states? Before the Taiwanese Mission in this new introductory orchid growing technique go much further, it would seem both markets and varieties, particularly if possible, to remove the high cost of electricity would be necessary to build a viable export business? Therefore this query goes to you as head of Research and Development at Central Farm and I gather you will have to do some research into markets, varieties, prices and growing compatibility studies in our local environment, to build a successful future for such an export industry for Belize. I await your facts research response with eagerness. This of course will give direction to the Taiwan Mission project, when they know more thoroughly the varieties they need to concentrate on, in our local marketing and growing environmental conditions.

Ray AuxillouHead of Development Research for the ‘Belize Development Trust’Editor - Falconview Newsletter for ‘Western Belize Happenings’.